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soupapalooza!

the stories
the kitchen
the market
the proof (party pics!)
the food porn
the recipes
the about
the drop me a line part
the resources
the full list
jewelry alchemy
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Hugh Acheson's spinach salad with spiced pecans, sliced pear and blue cheese with a shallot-thyme vinaigrette: zen and the art of herb chopping

I feel alive in New York. More alive than when I'm anywhere else, actually, even though statistically speaking I'm much less significant. There are 12 million people hanging around these here parts, and I am a cog in a big machine, not anything large in and of myself. There's some kind of harmony in the dirtiness, in the smells and in the little inconveniences of being surrounded by so many people and so many agendas and a rhythm in being in it. And as I was walking to dinner last night I was struck by exactly how much I felt like an ant. Like one of those "scout" ants that releases a smell trail so that other ants know where to follow to find food (I was somewhat smelly from a very hot day in the prep kitchen). And yes, that could seem dehumanizing and sad to think that people are like ants, but it somehow made me feel comforted, like it's amazing to think that being so infinitesimally small is actually powerful. That yes, we may have the illusion of freewill (or maybe it's not an illusion, I don't know) and we also have consciousness, but there's gotta be something bigger, too. And I'm really happy to give the idea of my big ego and my big life a much needed vacation; they've worked some long, miserable overtime hours and I'm hopping they'll be more fun when they return with some good drinking stories and a tan.

Making jewelry and cooking both put me in the same headspace that New York does. It's my meditation. It's having a plan, and in putting that plan into motion, making hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny little movements to complete the plan. It's more rote than conscious and it's incredibly mentally quiet, though it's certainly not physically quiet-- the prep kitchen was insane with playlists of both Tool and Tejana music last week. I had to completely block that shiz out the same way I did when we had the same 45 minute music loop (including Coldplay tracks, oh joy) for six months when I was folding t-shirts at Banana Republic. 

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PostedAugust 14, 2012
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriessalad, vegetarian
Tagshumble-pie-a-palooza!, shallot, spinach salad, thyme, herbs, chopped herbs, chopping to the oldies, new chefs knife kind of sucks, it's OK to be a scout ant, august adventure, blue cheese, Chef Kenobi, Englebert Humperdinck, spiced pecan, callouses, herbalicious, Tom Jones, vinaigrette
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pear with blue cheese and fried pancetta: “40” isn’t just a crappy song by U2 anymore

*Blogger’s note: I originally pulled this post down because I thought it a little too raw and personal. And it is. But here’s what I’ve come to believe: it’s just a version of the truth that doesn’t portray my behavior in the best possible light, to be sure, but ultimately is just a part of the whole. And that greater whole is complicated and sometimes loving and fun and sometimes petty and mean just the same, and that’s A-OK with me. This was just how I was dealing, incredibly poorly I might add, with my own expectations of the timeline. I hope you enjoy, even if you think I’m a total ingrate.  ---mm

If I thought I tripped into a pothole when I turned 39, then I plummeted full-force into an Everest-style crevasse starting a few short months before I summited to 40. I cannot tell you how crazy I became. Like so crazy that I pitched an absolute hissy fit when I found out my whole family was going to celebrate my niece’s ninth birthday but had no plan to acknowledge mine, this year that I would officially stop being Peter Pan and become Peter Pan-fried. Yes, I was jealous of a nine year old. Trust me, I’m aware (and, sadly, was also even aware at the time) of just how terrible I was behaving, but in the interest of really spilling the pettiest of the petty details, I’d like to set the scene:

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PostedFebruary 17, 2012
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriespositively piggy, soup
Tagsblue cheese, brattiness, panic button, soupapalooza!, cheesy, main course, 40, piggy piggy piggy, pancetta, pear
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pear with blue cheese and fried pancetta: ballad of a lazy blogger or how I put the lame in lament

I haven’t forsaken you, Dear Reader, I promise. Not at all. I did, however have quite the soup sabbatical. You see, I had this little “Oh no, I’m turning 40” blip and, in pursuit of personal goals like, say, making a living and dating, I neglected my soup baby. I feel bad. You, maybe not so much. But now that I actually feel the relief of being in my 40s, I think we can pick up where we left off and get back to the eating, entertaining and the spilling of guts. 

I’m in the middle of conjuring a post right now-- one with a beautiful soup I picked up from food52 that I made while my mom was here visiting for Thanksgiving that involved pears, blue cheese and friend pancetta. Yes, all that deliciousness in one bite. And there was more, too: homemade white truffle potato chips, mission fig, red onion and ricotta crostini, a salad of winter greens with apple, egg, pecorino with a pomegranate vinaigrette and my mom’s Italian cream cake. Which, by the way, is not Italian at all. So wait for it...it’s coming in a few short hours. Or maybe a day. I never can tell. But here are a few photos just to keep you waiting for my ramblings. And hopefully to whet your appetite for more...

Stay tuned and Soup on!

*please see the following post for the recipe!

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PostedFebruary 16, 2012
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriespositively piggy, soup
Tagsbrattiness, blue cheese, main course, cheesy, 40, piggy piggy piggy, pancetta, soup, pear
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butternut squash and apple with blue cheese: Halloween came a little early this year

Halloween came a week early this year when I came perilously close to chopping the tip of my left thumb off. It’s been months since my last knife wound thanks in part to knife skills lessons from various and sundry professionals (thank you, Obi Wan) and from a year’s worth of diligent practice; but it was like Dan Akroyd’s Julia Child from the late 1970’s SNL skit where blood just shoots out all over the place in a fountain of red corn syrup. Hilarious. Only mine was plasma and platelets which are apparently necessary to sustain human life. Anyway, I spent a large part of the afternoon with my left hand propped over my head wrapped in a roll of paper towels trying to avoid a trip to the emergency room for stitches since I let my health insurance lapse a few weeks ago. Eventually the bleeding slowed enough for me coat the digit with enough neosporin to support two girls in a mud wrestling vat and to dress it with a sterile bandage and cover it with a rubber glove so I could continue cooking.

And that wasn’t the only creepy occurrence. 

There was this little thing a while back where my subconscious rendered an ex boyfriend dead. As in totally kaput. Morto.

Yes, I had a dream, but not a dream in a MLK or a copper pot kind of way, oh no. It was like when Jimmy Smitts was written out of NYPD Blue: there were tears and there was pleading and then the dude died. As in dead. As disco. And I woke up sweaty and full of guilt and shame (guilt because I realized the One Night Stand-Up was sleeping next to me, and shame because technically I should now refer to him as the “Two Night Stand-Up”, which isn’t nearly as funny).   

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PostedOctober 28, 2010
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriesvegetarian, soup
TagsGorgeous G, apple pie ice cream, goat cheese w/ pistachio, cranberry & toasts, spinach and gruyere stuffed mushrooms, sunday bloody sunday, soup, butternut squash, blue cheese, killing off ex boyfriends, Chef Kenobi, soupapalooza!, cheesy, apple, romaine and flash pickled fig salad, thumbs up, One Night Stand Up
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roasted beet, cabrales, dried cherry and toasted walnut arugula salad: rock out, whatever

A bird pooped on my head and down my shirt this last Sunday, which only further bolsters my long brewing animosity towards nature. I’m not a happy camper, quite literally, and I’ve never understood why sleeping outside of four walls and a roof is any more magical than driving out to a location well beyond the lights of the city to marvel at the stars and then returning to a place with a hot shower and clean sheets. I don’t need or have any desire to wake up, dirty, with a creaky back and caffeine withdrawal, only to hike back to my overheated car, no thank you.

Two of my fellow ‘paloozians had milestone birthdays within two days of each other this week, and though I will not repeat that scary number (scary at least to single girls with pet children), it rhymes with worty, which no one wants to be except Madonna who, in a fit of good Kabbalah luck was “enlightened” at worty. 

Anyway, in an impromptu celebration of these two women, a few of our rag tag crew drove up north of Santa Barbara to a very beautiful state park and went glamping. No, that was not a typo; we went “glamorous camping”, which I would argue, is as much an oxymoron as jumbo shrimp. What exactly is glamping you ask? Glamping basically consists of a few steps. One: drive to a very nice campground in your Prius  (for the record and as I stated earlier, the environment and I are not exactly facebook friends, so obviously the Prius belongs to someone else-- I prefer my cars to get less than 14 MPG) which will be weighted down with three ice chests full of such necessities as carrot cake, israeli couscous salad, artisanal goat cheese, truffle sausage and fig jam. Next, pay the nice lady in the log cabin the cost of a very nice piece of furniture for two nights, spend the next hour unpacking the car and then apply bug spray before settling in to your posh camp house, which is really just a re-branded mobile home made to look like a log cabin. And finally, after all this, order your BBQ kit consisting of hamburger, fixins, tools and ingredients to make s’mores, to be delivered directly to your fire pit for dinner. 

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PostedJuly 21, 2010
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriessalad, vegetarian
Tagssalad, glamping, dried cherry, recipe, roasted beets, worty instead of 40, walnut, the great pothole of 39, blue cheese, beets, cabrales, not a friend of mother earth, Leggsy McGhee, a bird pooped on my head, Innercity Velvet, Maria-Hold-the-Eggs, Jihad Jenni
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goldsmith, sometime costume designer and badass cat owner. 

goldsmith, sometime costume designer and badass cat owner. 

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Why? Because soup is cheap, delicious and easy. Kind of like me.

a weekly attempt to eat well and to savor life. or to see how much food I can get on my clothes.

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